The best Basie

"He lighted a cigarette and tossed the empty pack into a grey-violet wastebasket. He looked at a yellow-stained radio with a phonograph annex. Then he found himself glancing at the record albums grouped in a yellow case beside the yellow-stained cabinet. "I see you go in for swing," he said. From another room she said, "Legitimate swing." ...

Dragging at the cigarette he stooped over and began going through the record albums. When he came to Basie he frowned. There was a lot of Basie. The best Basie. The same Basie he liked. There was Every Tub and Swinging the Blues and Texas Shuffle. There was John's Idea and Lester Leaps In and Out the Window. He...decided to play Texas Shuffle....He switched on the current and got the record under the needle. Texas Shuffle began to roll softly and it was very lovely. It clicked with the fact that he had a cigarette in his mouth, watching the smoke go up, and the police didn't know he was here."

- from David Goodis' tobacco-stained novel Dark Passage, 1946.